FEAR

[Bill Pitchford <Bill.Pitchford@asu.edu>]

The following is excerpted from Nuclear News, Volume 40, Number 7.

This issue (June 1997) contains a Special Section on Health Physics.

This excerpt is taken from the ANS Homepage: 
(  www.ans.org/pubs/magazines/NN/40/7eg.html  ) 

Prelude Notes:

I believe that this sample article is public domain as there are no 
copyright provisions posted on the pathway, but I would encourage any and 
all RADSAFERS that are not also ANS Members (and therefore already have a 
copy) to purchase and peruse the entire June 1997 issue (Volume 40, 
Number 7) of Nuclear News, or maybe better yet to associate with ANS. And 
since you already have your checkbook out, go ahead and associate with 
HPS, and SNM, and AAPM, and RRS, and three or four others (AIHA, ACS, 
IUPAC).  It is very easy to spend 20 percent of my annual income on
professional society dues.

And now the excerpt:(unexpurgated and text only formatting)

Fallout of fear 

The repeated insistence that no amount of radiation is small enough to be 
harmless has created in the public a clinically phobic fear of even
tiny amounts of radiation, according to phobia specialist Robert L. 
DuPont, M.D., president of the Institute for Behavior and Health. This
fear has led to regulations and requirements that are ridiculous on their 
face, degrading public confidence in the wisdom and common sense of
those officials they depend on to advise and protect them, and thwarting 
the beneficial uses of nuclear technology that could be easing some
of our most serious societal problems. For example: 

     More than 100 000 European women chose to have unnecessary abortions 
after the Chernobyl accident, out of a groundless fear of
     bearing "nuclear mutants." 
     Millions of cases of foodborne illness lead to more than 9000 deaths 
each year in the United States from pathogens infecting beef,
     poultry, eggs, and seafood that could easily be cold pasteurized by 
irradiation. 
     Thousands die each year in the United States from breathing 
particulates from coal-fired power plants, and yet the option of replacing
     these plants with nuclear plants that emit no particulates is hardly 
considered. 
     Nearly one million medical procedures involving radioisotopes, X 
rays, MRIs, or other forms of radiation are performed each day in
     the United States. These are our latest and best medical techniques, 
yet thousands of people avoid such life-saving procedures out of
     fear of radiation. That fear has also led to burdensome and costly 
regulatory requirements for accounting for, controlling, and disposing
     of trivially radioactive material--requirements that are beginning 
to price these vital procedures off the market. 
     Fear of radiation has made nuclear technology a non-option for many 
problems it is uniquely able to solve, such as global warming and
     air, water, and ground pollution. Countless applications in space, 
commerce, and industry, ranging from radiography of heavy metal
     parts to sterilization of medical instruments and bandages, are also 
threatened by this fear. 
     We worry about water shortages, yet most of the earth is covered 
with water. Energy is all it takes to make it potable and pump it
     where needed. Such possibilities are seldom mentioned in the media 
or in our schools. 
     In a 1995 decision, a federal district court ruled that an employer 
who allowed an employee to receive a total of 31 mrem over a
     period of four years had failed to meet its legal obligation because 
it could have reduced this exposure even further. The judge, with
     expert testimony as to the scientific validity of the LNT, ruled 
that the requirements of ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable)
     applied regardless of the radiation dose, and that a jury was 
competent to judge whether this obligation had been met. 
     In the name of ALARA, health physicists themselves have begun to 
play the game, proposing that harmless nuclear technologies such
     as tritium-lighted exit signs be eliminated, not because they are 
hazardous, but because the public might perceive them as hazardous. 

We must ask: Where are the victims? How long will we allow real people, 
with names and families, to die from the nonuse of radiation where
it is needed, in order to protect hypothetical people from casualties 
that never happen? Nuclear power accounts for only 5 percent of the
licenses issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, yet the other 
nuclear technologies depend on the continued existence of nuclear
reactors. If we shut down the reactors, it will be difficult, if not 
impossible, to carry on with nuclear activities that involve $250 billion 
in total
output, 3.7 million jobs, and $45 billion in tax revenues to federal, 
state, and local coffers, according to a March 1994 report by
Management Information Services, Inc. titled "Economic and Employment 
Benefits of the Use of Radioactive Materials."--T.R.



This Special Section would make a very lively discussion...


Bill Pitchford			Bill.Pitchford@asu.edu
Radiation Protection Facility	(602)965-6140 voice
Arizona State University	http://www.asu.edu
Campus Box 873501		(602)965-6609 facsimile
Tempe, Arizona 85287-3501	http://physics.isu.edu